Dolores Heights architecture

With its dark glass walls, flat modern lines and bare concrete base, the new house at Sanchez and 20th streets makes a brash first impression on the settled eastern slope of Dolores Heights.Now take a broader look at the entire block, and something else is revealed: a fresh strand in the neighborhood's architectural fabric.

One house on the west side of the 700 block is barn-shaped and deep-set; another swells with a single tile-roofed bay. The house in the middle of the block pulls back behind balconies in a demure Cubist manner. Two doors away, the protruding top floor is adorned with flower boxes.Even as they coexist with ease, what the houses share is a sensibility rather than a preordained style - a sensibility that extends to the newcomer as well, an 1,800-square-foot structure on a lot that would allow nearly twice that. The context of Dolores Heights, like the context of the city as a whole, is a tapestry that only grows more intriguing as new elements are added to the weave.

The steep, 400-foot hill itself is a definition rather than a destination, framing Noe Valley to the south and Dolores Park to the east. From afar it's a rustle of walls and porcelain tiles, green trees and straight asphalt.Things aren't so placid on foot in the enclave bounded roughly by Cumberland, Church, 22nd and Castro streets.

"Residents of the hill fought bitterly over location of the streets the city was preparing to cut into the sides of the hill," The Chronicle wrote in its 1958 piece on Dolores Heights, describing the early 20th century. "Everyone wanted the paved street to be at the level of his house - not that of the house across the way, which might be 20 or 30 feet higher or lower."he result was that some streets are split by retaining walls between lanes. Others filled in on one side but not the other. At the crest of 20th Street above Sanchez, for instance, the south side of the block was still open space when George Homsey and his wife bought a 50-foot-wide lot in 1963.

"It was a little blue-collar enclave back then, a cul-de-sac with steps down to Sanchez," recalled Homsey, a founding principal of the architectural firm Esherick Homsey Dodge & Davis. "This side was nothing but a rocky bank and the property above."Then, filling in the blanks was a casual thing. Homsey met with a bureaucrat, assured him the house wouldn't be too tall, and hired a contractor to erect a woodsy house that would look at home in a Sierra forest. Friends stopped by on weekends to help with interior details, such as the stained plywood floors that still do the job.

Now, new houses must align with the guidelines of the Dolores Heights Special Use District, established in 1980 "to encourage development in context and scale with established character and China ceramic tile." Builders and architects also are encouraged to vet their plans with the Dolores Heights Improvement Club, a neighborhood association.Groups like this emerged across the city in the 1960s and '70s, many of them in reaction to what was seen as excessive or insensitive development.

The 3600 block of 21st Street is a case study in why such fears took root. On the summit at Sanchez stands the home built by then-Mayor Sunny Jim Rolph in 1930, a storybook chateau with small paned window and a brick-studded chimney. Downhill - literally - the block concludes with a 30-unit apartment building from 1963, a colorless box with so little grace that on Church Street the hill's underlying rock stands exposed behind three concrete piers.

While families like the Homseys staked their claim with affection and care, mid-century builders slapped in product with no thought for their surroundings. No wonder that neighborhood groups stepped forward to protect their terrain, or why the city's Urban Design Plan of 1971 warned that "modern changes tend to be extremely potent and to have sharply visible negative effects."

Some people are fed up with excessively noisy restaurants and they never seem to tire of talking about it. It’s one of the most frequent topics — and complaints — I get as a restaurant critic. More than two years ago, in March 2011, I wrote a blog about the five noisiest restaurants in the Bay Area. The Golden Hearing Aid Award went to Leopold’s; Rotisserie and Wine in Napa (now closed); Cafe Des Amis, which now has drapes and other additions; Nopa, which also did some acoustical work; and Adesso in Oakland.

What that means is that the decibel level at some restaurants continues to increase as the lines between a bar and restaurant continue to blur. Probably the loudest place I’ve been in the last year or so is Mikkeller Bar on Mason Street. That said,  it’s hard to be too critical because it’s basically a bar that happens to have a full dinner menu.  While many patrons were standing around drinking the 40+ beers, others were sitting at the table ordering sausages, salads and sandwiches.  Even though I was sitting next to my dining companion at a communal table, I felt like my head would explode, not so much from the noise, but trying to make myself heard. Since I hadn’t caught up with my friend for a while, after we finished our sausage platter we went to a  quieter place for an after-dinner drink  to finish our conversation.

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